Download or read book At Night All Blood Is Black written by David Diop and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.

Download or read book Hammer Blows and Other Writings written by David Diop and published by Bloomington : Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hammer Blows written by David Mandessi Diop and published by Bloomsbury UK. This book was released on 2024-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Art of Losing written by Alice Zeniter and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Dublin Literary Award A Best Historical Novel of the Year at The New York Times Book Review "[An] extraordinary achievement." —Liesl Schillinger, The Wall Street Journal Across three generations, three wars, two continents, and the mythic waters of the Mediterranean, one family’s history leads to an inevitable question: What price do our descendants pay for the choices that we make? Naïma knows Algeria only by the artifacts she encounters in her grandparents’ tiny apartment in Normandy: the language her grandmother speaks but Naïma can’t understand, the food her grandmother cooks, and the precious things her grandmother carried when they fled. Naïma’s father claims to remember nothing; he has made himself French. Her grandfather died before he could tell her his side of the story. But now Naïma will travel to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind—including their secrets. The Algerian War for Independence sent Naïma’s grandfather on a journey of his own, from wealthy olive grove owner and respected veteran of the First World War, to refugee spurned as a harki by his fellow Algerians in the transit camps of southern France, to immigrant barely scratching out a living in the north. The long battle against colonial rule broke apart communities, opened deep rifts within families, and saw the whims of those in even temporary power instantly overturn the lives of ordinary people. Where does Naïma’s family fit into this history? How do they fit into France’s future? Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing is a powerful, moving family novel that spans three generations across seventy years and two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a resonant people’s history of Algeria and its diaspora. It is a story of how we carry on in the face of loss: loss of country, identity, language, connection. Most of all, it is an immersive, riveting excavation of the inescapable legacies of colonialism, immigration, family, and war.

Download or read book Imagine Africa written by Mia Couto and published by Archipelago. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine Africa and its theme of "Revolution" is introduced by Georges Lory who opens the collection with his essay, "Poets to your quills, Africa is taking off". Through a collage of poems, essays, fiction, and visual art, Imagine Africa gives us a glimpse of a kaleidoscopic contemporary Africa.

Download or read book The Light of Luna Park written by Addison Armstrong and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of The Orphan Train and Before We Were Yours, a historical debut about a nurse who chooses to save a baby's life, and risks her own in the process, exploring the ties of motherhood and the little-known history of Coney Island and America's first incubators. A nurse's choice. A daughter's search for answers. New York City, 1926. Nurse Althea Anderson's heart is near breaking when she witnesses another premature baby die at Bellevue Hospital. So when she reads an article detailing the amazing survival rates of babies treated in incubators in an exhibit at Luna Park, Coney Island, it feels like the miracle she has been searching for. But the doctors at Bellevue dismiss Althea and this unconventional medicine, forcing her to make a choice between a baby's life and the doctors' wishes that will change everything. Twenty-five years later, Stella Wright is falling apart. Her mother has just passed, she quit a job she loves, and her marriage is struggling. Then she discovers a letter that brings into question everything she knew about her mother, and everything she knows about herself. The Light of Luna Park is a tale of courage and an ode to the sacrificial love of mothers.

Download or read book A History of the Republic of Biafra written by Samuel Fury Childs Daly and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come. Samuel Fury Childs Daly examines the history of the Nigerian Civil War and its aftermath from an uncommon vantage point – the courtroom. Wartime Biafra was glutted with firearms, wracked by famine, and administered by a government that buckled under the weight of the conflict. In these dangerous conditions, many people survived by engaging in fraud, extortion, and armed violence. When the fighting ended in 1970, these survival tactics endured, even though Biafra itself disappeared from the map. Based on research using an original archive of legal records and oral histories, Daly catalogues how people navigated conditions of extreme hardship on the war front, and shows how the conditions of the Nigerian Civil War paved the way for the country's long experience of crime that was to follow.

Download or read book India Empire and First World War Culture written by Santanu Das and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first cultural and literary history of India and the First World War, with archival research from Europe and South Asia.

Download or read book Meteorology of Tropical West Africa written by Douglas J. Parker and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meteorology of tropical West Africa: the Forecasters’ Handbook presents the science and practice of weather forecasting for an important region of the tropics. Connecting basic theory with forecasting practice, the book provides a unique training volume for operational weather forecasters, and is also suitable for students of tropical meteorology. The West African region contains a number of archetypal climatic zones, meaning that the science of its weather and climate applies to many other tropical regions. West Africa also exhibits some of the world’s most remarkable weather systems, making it an inspiring region for students to investigate. The weather of West Africa affects human livelihoods on a daily basis, and can contribute to hardship, poverty and mortality. Therefore, the ability to understand and predict the weather has the potential to deliver significant benefits to both society and economies. The book includes comprehensive background material alongside documentation of weather forecasting methods. Many examples taken from observations of West African weather systems are included and online case-studies are referenced widely.

Download or read book The Perfect Nine written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says “tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epic form, Ngũgĩ tells the story of the founding of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya, from a strongly feminist perspective. A verse narrative, blending folklore, mythology, adventure, and allegory, The Perfect Nine chronicles the efforts the Gĩkũyũ founders make to find partners for their ten beautiful daughters—called “The Perfect Nine” —and the challenges they set for the 99 suitors who seek their hands in marriage. The epic has all the elements of adventure, with suspense, danger, humor, and sacrifice. Ngũgĩ’s epic is a quest for the beautiful as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. He notes, “The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family; and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture.”

Download or read book How to Order the Universe written by María José Ferrada and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A San Francisco Chronicle and Southwest Review Best Book of the Year and A World Literature Today Notable Translation of the Year “A dreamscape of a book. I adored this compelling, wise, and utterly unique coming-of-age tale.” —Tara Conklin For seven-year-old M, the world is guided by a firm set of principles, based on her father D’s life as a traveling salesman. Enchanted by her father’s trade, M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling hardware supplies against the backdrop of Pinochet-era Chile. As father and daughter trek from town to town in their old Renault, M’s memories and thoughts become tied to a language of rural commerce, philosophy, the cosmos, hardware products, and ghosts. M, in her innocence, barely notices the rising tensions and precarious nature of their work until she and her father connect with an enigmatic photographer, E, whose presence threatens to upend the unusual life they’ve created. María José Ferrada expertly captures a vanishing way of life and a father-daughter relationship on the brink of irreversible change. At once nostalgic, dangerous, sharply funny, and full of delight and wonder, How to Order the Universe is a richly imaginative debut and a rare work of magic and originality.

Download or read book European language Writing in Sub Saharan Africa written by Albert S. Gérard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1986 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book In the Company of Men written by Véronique Tadjo and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE Harper’s Bazaar: Best Book of the Year Boston Globe: Best Book of the Year Ms. Magazine: Best Feminist Book of the Year Words Without Borders: Best Translated Book of the Year Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant, timely fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life and humanity’s place in the world. Two boys venture from their village to hunt in a nearby forest, where they shoot down bats with glee, and cook their prey over an open fire. Within a month, they are dead, bodies ravaged by an insidious disease that neither the local healer’s potions nor the medical team’s treatments could cure. Compounding the family’s grief, experts warn against touching the sick. But this caution comes too late: the virus spreads rapidly, and the boys’ father is barely able to send his eldest daughter away for a chance at survival. In a series of moving snapshots, Véronique Tadjo illustrates the terrible extent of the Ebola epidemic, through the eyes of those affected in myriad ways: the doctor who tirelessly treats patients day after day in a sweltering tent, protected from the virus only by a plastic suit; the student who volunteers to work as a gravedigger while universities are closed, helping the teams overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies; the grandmother who agrees to take in an orphaned boy cast out of his village for fear of infection. And watching over them all is the ancient and wise Baobab tree, mourning the dire state of the earth yet providing a sense of hope for the future. Acutely relevant to our times in light of the coronavirus pandemic, In the Company of Men explores critical questions about how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice.

Download or read book The African Origin of Civilization written by Cheikh Anta Diop and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Publisher: Edited and translated by Mercer Cook. Laymen and scholars alike will welcome the publication of this one-volume translation of the major sections of C.A. Diop's two books, Nations negres et culture and Anteriorite des civilizations negres, which have profoundly influenced thinking about Africa around the world. It was largely because of these works that, at the World Festival of the Arts held in Dakar in 1966, Dr. Diop shared with the late W.E.B. DuBois an award as the writer who had exerted the greatest influence on Negro thought in the 20th century.

Download or read book Growing Up with Poetry written by David Rubadiri and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1989 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology designed for the enjoyment and instruction of students from junior-secondary school onwards. The poems focus on aspects central to African life and culture: lover, identity, death, village life, separation, power and freedom. Guidance for teachers is included.

Download or read book African Literature in French written by Dorothy S. Blair and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1976-11-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1976 book provides both a historical survey and a critical analysis of the literature in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Professor Blair begins by discussing the social, educational and political influences which led to the formation of the Negritude movement and to a flowering of French-African creative writing. This historical approach is then complemented by a study of the different literary genres. She traces the evolution of the first manifestations of literary activity in French by African writers, the written folk-tale, fable and short story, from the oral tradition of the indigenous culture, and the eventual appearance of the novel with a legendary or historical theme. The origins of French-African drama are considered for the first time, and the work of the minor poets analysed. Finally, Professor Blair attempts a definition of the French-African novel, and studies examples from three major periods from the 1930s onwards.

Download or read book Celestial Bodies written by Jokha Alharthi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celestial Bodies is the International Booker-winning and internationally bestselling novel from Jokha Alharthi. Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Elegantly structured and taut, Celestial Bodies is a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman’s coming-of-age through the prism of one family’s losses and loves. PRAISE FOR CELESTIAL BODIES "An innovative reimagining of the family saga . . . Celestial Bodies is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets” NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "The great pleasure of reading Celestial Bodies is witnessing a novel argue, through the achieved perfection of its form, for a kind of inquiry that only the novel can really conduct. The ability to move freely through time, the privileged access to the wounded privacies of many characters, the striking diversity of human beings across a relatively narrow canvas, the shock waves as one generation heaves, like tectonic plates, against another, the secrets and lapses and repressions, at once intimate and historical, the power, indeed, of an investigation that is always political and always intimate―here is the novel being supremely itself, proving itself up to the job by changing not its terms of employment but the shape of the task." THE NEW YORKER "Breathtaking. The tale is replete with history, poetry, and philosophy, but also slavery, broken marriages, passion, and not-so-secret lovers." THE ATLAN